Have you ever felt like you had so much creativity, so many new ideas or expanded ideas that have been simmering on the back burner of your mind for so long that you almost gave up on them but then you wake up one morning and they are bubbling over, flowing and expanding with possibility and creativity?

That is how I am feeling today!

I don’t know who this poem/verse is for, maybe it is more for me than anyone else. But in sharing it I hope that someone other than myself will be encouraged through it.

Yes I created this cover and yes it took me much longer than I would have imagined. What do you think of it?

I always thought I would never venture into self publishing but after reading James Scott Bells book “Self Publishing Attack!”, which I highly recommend. I am encouraged and excited to move forward and see Mattie’s Legacy published as an e-book.

After losing a spouse or loved one you realize that you don’t really have as much time as you might think. So I am not going to wait two years to realize the dream, I am going to be daring and bold on my own (as GOD leads me ((big smile)) and I look forward to seeing my dream realized within the next month.

I would like to recruit five beta readers for my historical fiction “Mattie’s Legacy”. I will be gifting the chosen readers with a prize package as a thank you. All that is required to qualify for the prize package is to read the book and answer a few questions. And I will also include each readers name in the book as an acknowledgement and thank you.

Wrapping up February’s focus on love, I thought about how powerful that four letter word is. And how the meaning and truth of the word love can become twisted and defiled. I really wanted to write an amazing poem and had more of a miss than a hit with doing so. But what I want to impart is so important that I fear the message gets lost in too much explanation. I even thought about how in a court of law the evidence is what matters and I know I’am the evidence. But that is hard for people to grasp because you would have had to known me and how my life began and where I am now. My first real understanding of what love meant was after I read 1 Corinthians 13…It blew my mind. I won’t write it all out but here is a paraphrase: Love is Kind, Love is Patient, Love is not Proud, Love is not Rud Love is not Selfish or Self Seeking, Love Forgives, No matter what you do, how much money you have or give if you don’t Love..it means nothing (Wow) ….Love Faith and Hope and the Greatest of these is Love. This is my favorite chapter in the Bible. I feel like it changed my life. I never really knew love, or how to love before getting that word in my heart. I can assure you My life is the evidence of God’s amazing Love.

Here is a fun, interesting tangible experiment you can do that will bless you and others too:

The Five Minute Love Miracle:

In 2007 I read about something called the five minute love miracle and it was a pretty simple concept. Set a timer for five minutes and think of feeling love ie…what makes you stirred up with feelings of love? For me, my babies, Grandmother, friends…Get that feeling built up and then if there is a person or situation that is troubling you think of it surrounded with love…you can see a pink or white light as love and then you see you and that person smiling, hugging etc..or the situation resolving in a loving way. I was dealing with a lot of stuff and thought why not give it a try. I started with my teenagers, my husband, even other people and situations..and every time there was a positive outcome.

It Works !

It makes sense to me that practicing the Love Miracle works because GOD is Love and it feels like a more effectual way of practicing the presence of GOD, sort of like a prayer of the imagination. Try it and see if it helps you to feel a deeper calm and more love too.

Remember that I shared in my last post how I heard GOD tell me, He would help me? I know he spoke those exact words to me on purpose so that when the time came when I was desperate and knew I could not change on my own, that I would recall exactly what He said to me.

Several days after I had heard GOD I had already reached that point of desperation. The nightmares were back with a vengeance, and so was the insomnia I had struggled with since I was a child. I had learned how to self medicate by taking some form of methamphetamine during the day and using alcohol and marijuana to sleep at night. But since I truly believed that I had to choose life or death after I heard from GOD, I realized that somewhere deep within me, I did want to live even though I had been living for a very long time like I didn’t.

I gave up everything, drugs, alcohol all of it at once and I was dealing with the affect of withdrawing from all of those chemicals. But my problem was not just chemical, mental, and physical withdrawal. I had been drawn into the occult and new age too and I believe the enemy was fighting to keep me entangled in that world. And his major assault was a war against my mind. I could not sleep. I was afraid and desperate, and literally cried out, “You said you would help me and I need help.” I heard one word in response,

“BIBLE.”

Great I didn’t have one but I lived with my Grandmother so I asked her if she had a Bible and she said yes that it was in her sewing room. I was desperate enough to take on the challenge of digging through boxes of a great accumulation of fabric, yarn, and stuff until I found a black leather King James Version. I took it to my room. I opened it up to Genesis One and began to read. Somewhere in those first few chapters I fell a sleep.

Here is a miracle moment.

That was the first time in my life I remember falling asleep without some kind of substance in my system, or waking up all through the night as I did when I was child, filled with fear, or having a nightmare. The first time I actually slept! It was such a small normal thing for most people. But for me, sleep was on the level of miraculous. I know I didn’t really “get ” what I was reading, I wasn’t memorizing or retaining the importance of the words. But there is power in the Word and that much I got loud and clear.

The words in Matthew 11:28 are true:

Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.

Before GOD could begin any redemptive work in me, He showed me that I could trust Him. That is the first thing the enemy destroys and that was the first area of my life GOD restored. That didn’t mean all my trust issues with people were healed by no means. But I did have a sliver of Faith and I knew what GOD said, He would do.

I was a mess, drugs, anger, self centered ego driven, and I carried a deep hate for myself, steeped in shame. But GOD in his infinite grace lifted me gently step by step, day by day out of the pit I was born into and gave me a hope for a better future. And when I struggled, which I did time and time again, and cried to GOD in frustration and despair that I would never be like the women I met at church, or be good enough, GOD assured me that he was changing me from the inside out. That is where He starts, at the heart of who we are.

Because we are created with a Spirit, Soul and Body, GOD starts with our spirit, restores our soul which is our mind and emotions and that in turn affects our body, outward actions and appearance.

It is not by accident that the enemy uses those closest to us, family, friends etc, as tools to exact his plan of destruction upon us while we are young and the most pliable. His first plan of action is to destroy any trust we have in people, and that in turn causes us not to trust those who say they love us or in the emotion described as love. He truly wants us to hate and misunderstand the word love. Why?

Because GOD is LOVE ! There it is ..if you mistrust anyone who says they love you then you will grow up not trusting in a GOD who is LOVE